Blue Dragonfly vs. Neumann TLM-103

A while back I bought myself two new microphones for my fledgling project studio.  Since I didn't have too much money burning a hole in my pocket I went with two mid-range options that I had heard good things about and was able to pick up off eBay for a pretty good steal.  The two winners were the Blue Dragonfly, and the Neumann TLM-103.

Both are cardioid large diaphragm studio condenser microphones.  Both seem to be geared towards the same applications: vocals, drum overheads, room mics - etc.  In many ways they are very similar and both were able to pick up a nice clean complete sound from whatever source I recorded - though there are some interesting differences that I'll touch on later.

Blue Dragonfly

At retail cost, the Blue Dragonfly goes for around $600 (I picked mine up off eBay for just under $400).  My Dragonfly arrived in a retro looking fabric blue case and it is unlike any microphone I have used up to this point.  The shock mount is actually part of the microphone - thus giving the microphone a resemblance of a dragon fly.  The construction seems fragile, but it is surprisingly resilient.  Let's be honest, any mic I'm paying this much money for I'll be careful with.   It's construction has been resilient enough to handle regular use and even a tumbles when the stand it was on was knocked over.

Neumann TLM-103

The retail cost of the Neumann TLM-103 is around $1,000 (I ended up paying about $750 on eBay).  It arrived in a nice metal case with a shock mount and a certificate of manufacture (or something like that).  This is a heavy mic, when using it I have to sandbag the stand to keep it from tipping over.  It was built to last and I have a feeling it will last for a very long time.

The first time I did a side by side comparison of the two microphones was when recording a female vocal track.  The equipment used was a laptop with Pro Tools M-Powered, a ProjectMix I/O, and the two microphones.  We didn't use any special preamps other than those built into the ProjectMix I/O.  One interesting thing - these mics don't require much gain at all - the TLM-103 requiring less than the Dragonfly.  When setting the gain levels for the mics I barely apply any gain at all.  If you are using cheap preamps (like those in the ProjectMix) you might find it hard to leave adequate head room on the tracks.  We addressed this by moving the mics a little farther away from the singer and increasing the gain ever so slightly.

We recorded the vocals using both mics simultaneously and did an A/B comparison of the two tracks.  Both tracks sounded better than any vocals I had recorded previously with my SM58 (it would have been a sad day if this weren't the case).  They were both nice and clear and a very good reproduction of the live sound.  The difference between the two was subtle, but noticeable.  The Dragonfly seemed to cater a little more toward the feeling of the song as well as our singers voice.  When our singer would push her voice and the mic would approach clipping it seemed to add a nice subtle retro-growl - whereas the TLM-103 would deliver a very clean (almost too clean) signal.  For this recording it was obvious that the Dragonfly was the winner.

The next comparison I did was using the two mics as drum overheads.  In this situation the preamp issue discussed above came into play - it was nearly impossible to get the mics no to clip while recording harder drum lines - though I'm sure this would be much less of a problem if you were using preamps that were a step above the junior varsity stuff in my ProjectMix I/O.  When we did the A/B comparison of the mics as overheads for drums the Neumann TLM-103 won out pretty easily - that "retro-growl" that made the Dragonfly win the female vocals test was a definite hindrance in the drum overhead test.  The Neumann delivered crisp clean high ends whereas the Dragonfly delivered some slightly muddy and distorted high ends (once again, both were better than the condensers I was previously using).

The setup we've been using to get ideas recorded lately is the following:

• Dragonfly as a room microphone
• Neumann TLM-103 as a drum overhead
• Audix F14 for kick drum
• Audix F10 for snare drum (and Audix F12 for floor tom if the song calls for it)
• Direct line for Guitar and Bass

We settled on this because the TLM-103 does very well as a drum overhead mic, and the Dragonfly seems to pick up the feeling of the room adequately enough to get some natural reverb and the feel of our space.  When mixing we find that we start with just Room track, and then use the other tracks to reinforce the parts of the sound that we feel are missing.  Here's links to two tracks that were recorded with this setup (actually using Logic Pro rather than Pro Tools):

• The Cure (It's not a Cure song, it just sounds like one)
• Modest Mouse (Once again, not a Modest Mouse song, just kinda sounds like one - also I wasn't happy with how the snare turned out on this, but that has more to do with the positioning of the Audix F10 than anything else)

Please keep in mind, the above recordings are just us getting ideas recorded so we have something to listen to later and remind us where we were heading - we're not shooting for something that's ready to ship off to mastering ;).

In the end, I'm extremely impressed with both Microphones and don't regret the purchase of either.  I will probably go to the Dragonfly first when recording vocals - and use the TLM-103 for drum overheads and instruments.  My spidey sense tells me that this will likely change once I pick up a decent preamp - my guess is that the preamp adds a little color of its own to each mic and will probably change my thoughts on which one works for which job.

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JBL LSR 4328P - New Studio Monitors

Back in November I bought a pair of JBL LSR 4328P studio monitors as a birthday present to myself. I never realized what a large difference good studio monitors can make. Admittedly I skipped a few interim steps going from nothing directly to JBL's top of the line studio monitor - but it was my birthday so just give me a break.


The monitors were packaged for shipping really well (heavy little suckers though). The set I purchased included the monitors, remote control, microphone, and all the cables needed. The setup was pretty straightforward. To get them setup put the monitors where you want them in the room. Next network the two (or however many you have) monitors together with a CAT5 cable. If you have more than two monitors you'll end up daisy chaining them together. The monitors that are at either end of the chain you have to terminate with CAT5 terminators (they come with the monitors don't worry). Set the switches on the backs of the monitors to correspond with the room location of the monitor. The last thing you need to do is plug in the power.

Performing the room mode correction is also straightforward. Just plug the RMC mic into the monitor and position it in the room at your listening location. To do the actual adjustment press and hold the RMC button. The monitors will do a frequency sweep (it's a little loud but not too ridiculously loud). Once that's done you should be good to go.

Up to this point I had been using a pair of headphones and a really old pair of consumer speakers to attempt to mix my tracks. Due to this, all my tracks sounded really weird everywhere except for in my basement. Tracks mixed on the old setup ended up being really mid-range heavy. Back in 2008 we had recorded a Halloween show - I tried to mix this recording on the old setup and the result was nearly un-listenable. There are various problems with how we recorded that show, regardless I should have been able to get it into a listenable state. Alas, I could never get it to sound right anywhere except for in my basement. With these new monitors I was finally able to get a listenable mix out of that show - as well as able to remix and fix numerous other recordings. Click this link to hear my favorite song from that Halloween show.

These monitors provide an extremely accurate image of what you have recorded with a very flat frequency response. I would recommend listening to some of your favorite CDs on these (or really any) studio monitors and you'll be shocked at everything you hear. I would definitely recommend these to anyone considering them. The only drawback is the price tag.

Here's a link to a song we've been working on that has now been remixed using these monitors: Winter Groves. I wish I still had the old mix so you could hear the difference the monitors made, but suffice it to say - this mix is far superior.

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Summertime, and the living is lazy...

Okay, so over the summer I haven't really done much. Well I've done plenty, but not much related to recording or evenplaying music. As you may or may not know, I actually play and write music in addition to attempting to record music and sound. Normally a number of my mates and I get together once a week and work on songs. I personally play drums, guitar, and bass - not all at once or anything - and not very well - but good enough to write and feel confident recording.

Unfortunately this summer we haven't really been getting together too much. Summer activities are all over the place and getting the kids together in a hot and sweaty basement just isn't the most attractive option (especially when there are free open air concerts downtown including Bon Iver, Social Distortion, and Iron and Wine). So since we haven't been able to really get our scheudles up and running togther we've kinda just called a hiatus on it for the rest of the summer. With full intention of starting back up in the fall (or as soon as the concerts are over).

With all the excuses out of the way - my roommate and I are going to be starting a new project. He is currently learning to play drums and already can play the guitar. He wants to cover around 10 songs by Tears for Fears in various styles (grunge, rockabiliy, country, trip-hop, whatever). So we are going to start working on those - as the songs are completed (or we at least have rough recordings) I'll post the results here and talk about anything special we did.

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Commentary Track for Mountain Board Video (Let IT Happen)

My friend, Van Dewitt, recently put the finishing touches on his crew's first mountain boarding DVD. The DVD is called "Let IT Happen". You can see a web version of the video on their site at http://www.dirtstararmy.com/dvd2009/ . They wanted to get a commentary track option put onto the video as an additional feature to give the DVD a little more value. I've been volunteering (almost obnoxiously so) my services to Van for a while now and he finally took advantage of my offer.

We met with most of the participants involved before hand so we could figure out what the expectation was and what they were hoping to get out of this activity. In the end we planned to record 5 guys watching the video talking about the footage and giving some behind the scenes insight.

To setup for the session I rearranged my basement studio to make for a comfortable move watching environment. I setup 3 microphones on stands and used my 2 lavaliere microphones to mic the two guys who weren't close to the microphones on stands. This allowed me to have each participants voice recorded to their own track for mixing and panning. I used my M-audio project mix IO to simultaneously record these 5 tracks.

To sync the commentary to the video I simply imported a Quick time version of the movie into pro tools and setup my 50-inch LCD television as a secondary monitor. With this as the setup I was able to record all 5 tracks in perfect sync with the existing audio (the audio that was imported from the Quick time video).

We recorded two takes. Each take was recorded on different tracks altogether. At the end of the recording session my pro tools session had 11 tracks. 10 vocal tracks from the guys doing the commentary (5 tracks for each take) and 1 music track that was imported from the quick time video. I setup two stereo AUX buses and sent the vocal tracks from the first take to AUX-1/2 and the vocal tracks from the second take to AUX-3/4.

I used a vocal leveler compressor on each individual vocal track, tweaking the settings only where completely necessary. EQ on all the tracks was already pretty close to perfect so I left this where it was. The last thing I did at a single track level was to pan each track in such a way so that the stereo presence of the vocal tracks gave a feeling of sitting in a room with these guys.

Once both takes were setup and sounding good on their own I used automation on the aux tracks to switch between the two different takes depending on which one had better commentary at any given point in time. Finally I mixed the original audio from the DVD in at a very low volume level so you could still hear the original soundtrack and sound of the DVD. Once the mix was finalized and mastered for DVD audio levels and dynamic range I bounced the finished product to a 24-bit wave file to send over to the guy doing the DVD authoring.

I would love to post a copy of the finished result, however I'm not sure what the marketing plans are for their DVD and I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate me posting it online for free. I'll try to post a 1 or 2 minute sample in the next little bit, but to hear the whole thing I suggest you purchase their DVD. To be honest the commentary track is very entertaining, their footage
and the production value of the video is simply amazing especially if you knew what their budget looked like.

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The most funnest part - Scoring for Film

So, my musical abilities are mediocre at best - but the most enjoyable part of the who film project was writing and synchronizing a score to the film.

To do the scoring is like recording any other music in pro tools - the only difference is we imported the picture locked version of the film from the video editor gave into Pro Tools. This let us see exactly what's happening in the film and record music to match. I actually used my LCD television as a second monitor to display the video on so I could use my laptop screen to run Pro Tools.

Once the picture is imported we laid down a number of different instrument tracks (due to time pressure we didn't use anything outside of the !Xpand! plug-in for pro tools) - many kudos to Alex for coming up with melodies and guiding me in the use of strings for the score. It is the point when you see the film and hear the music together that you start to get a feeling for how the final film was going to turn out. Just like all the other steps when we were done with our composition we bounced the tracks out to a wav file and sent it up to the video editors to sync back with the picture in final cut.

One thing I wish we had done differently was a final mix of all the tracks (Foley, Dialog, and Score) in pro tools and then sent a single wav file back up to the video editors - this would have given us total control over how the dialog was mixed with the music and sound effects - but in the end they did a pretty good job upstairs (or the levels we gave them were all close enough).

So this concludes my posts about the 48 hour film project - hopefully I'll be able to provide more posts about sound for film in the future.

And yes - the picture above is me in my pajamas scoring the film published in my first post.

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Mastering Audio for 48 hour film project

A quick recap:

1. Recorded Dialog Audio while filming
2. Bounced files for specific takes up to the video editors
3. Recorded Foley sound effects and bounced files up to the video editors

So at this point we were onto our last day of the project. Woke up that morning and worked with the video editor to figure out what my next steps were. We realized the next day that the levels and some of the EQ on the takes I had bounced up to him were less than ideal - I told him I could re do those specific takes, but due to our time constraint we decided that we would wait until he had picture lock (finalized the timing of takes and the sync of the audio I had given him into the final timeline of the film) and then give me the master tracks (for both Foley and dialog) to master as a finished track.

So he delivered to me two different versions of the film. One with just the Foley sound and another with just the dialog (remember the dialog was delivered so that the track of Charlie was panned right and the track of the mom was panned right).

I imported the version with the dialog into Pro tools and broke the stereo track into two separate mono tracks. The allowed me to fix the EQ problem on the Charlie track without effecting the EQ of the other track. It also allowed me to use a different Compression and limiter settings on the two tracks to achieve a good sounding mix. Finally I did the fun part of watching the film (since it was imported into pro tools) and panning the dialog as appropriate (based on where the character was on screen). The last thing I did was import a track of ambient noise to mix underneath the two vocal tracks. Lastly I did a final bit of compression on the master output to get the vocals leveled and remove any weird peaks. The result wasn't perfect, but was much better than we would've been able to achieve had we used a single boom mic instead of multi tracking the two bits of dialog together. Once this was done I bounced the file back up to the video guy and he easily synced it up to the video. The results were starting to come together.

After the dialog was done I mastered the Foley tracks. Mostly used compression to get the more quiet effects out. Rode the faders and added some automation to get some nice dynamics on the track - added some reverb and delay in places where they wanted the sounds a little more wet - and bounced that back up to the video guy for syncing.

Only thing left (from my perspective) was to get the music/soundtrack scored and bounced up as well. But I'll save that for the last posting.

All and all the mastering step was fairly easy. I really only used the default Pro-Tools vocal leveler settings on a compressor - a 4 band EQ to fix Charlie's mid range EQ issue and a little bit of reverb to make the tracks sound less sterile (I added a 1% mix of reverb in and it did wonders).

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Foley Sound for Film

As part of the 48 hour project we also needed some Foley and effect sound work done. After they had written the script and determined all the different shots they were going to use, I was able to run through the script with them and identify various sounds they were going to need.

One bit of advice for you here - get as descriptive as possible. It's easy if the sound they're looking for is a simple Foley sound like a light switch or a door closing. It's much more difficult when they cross that line into effect sounds such as a monster's dragging noise (dragging? dragging what? dragging over what?)... In the end I had a list of about 15 different sounds we needed, ranging from the ordinary light switching and door opening/closing to the more creative of bone-cracking/popping - wheezing etc.

Since I don't have a super expensive Neumann microphone, we used two different microphones in parallel to capture the sounds. We used a Sure SM58 to capture the more mid-range and low-end stuff, and an Audix condenser microphone usually used as a drum kit overhead to capture the more high end components. This actually worked out well because I could apply an effect to part one of the tracks (like reverb or a small delay) and just mix the other track in.

To get the various noises we did just about anything we could think of. For the basic Foley stuff we found doors or light switches that had good traditional sounds and recorded those. For sheets rustling or footsteps on carpet we got a little more imaginative using winter coats and other starchy fabrics. For the effect noises of the monster we used fruits and vegetables, sticks from the yard, we even recorded my roommate popping his knuckles and cracking his neck (this are two of my favorites). We then layered the knuckle pops and some of the celery breaks to get a nice wet popping and cracking sound that we were very happy with. Our favorite two results from the vegetables were breaking multiple stalks of celery at one time and breaking apart a bell pepper. For a great dry breaking sound we found some dry pine cones and broke those apart.

When we had captured the sounds, layered them on top of one another (using pro-tools for both the recording and the layout). We bounced individual wav files out for each sound and gave them to the editors upstairs. In the future I think I'd like to try my hand at timing these with the picture and doing the fine tuning - but for such a short project I think this worked well...

Next time I'll try to talk a little about the mastering process we went through.

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